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Thursday, 30 May 2013

Anarkangel - Interview - Albums, Writings and Videos

To
the backdrop of Rammstein I sat down with Morgan Deane, Dan Gerber,
Matt Gerber and Dave Gibson. When pieced together they represent
something unique, something spontaneous, something inspired from
frustration, love, hate, pleasure, desire and depravity. Together
they represent Anarkangel, a metal band with no real direction of
influence and a style that can only be described as infectious.

With
a music video, “Sick”, recently released from their debut album
“This Moral Void” I wanted to get their views on what it actually
means to be Anarkangel. I wanted an insight into their writing
styles, production methods and exactly why South African girls have
teeth hidden deep in their vaginas.

What is Anarkangel?
How has it all come to exist to what it is today?

Dan: It involved
a lot of whiskey! In Brady's!

Morgan: Myself
and Dan sat down, on a lot of whiskey and decided we were gonna
create a heavy metal band, and it was gonna be something astounding.
And then we drank some more whiskey and then we forgot about it for
about three years!

Dan:
That's pretty much it. We had one song, “All Your Ties” and we
redid it about five times and then four times after that. Then the
third time was when we decided that was the kind of style we wanted
to go. It took us a long time, I mean, we drank fuckin' bottles of
whiskey. We nearly killed an Indian guy.

Morgan:
I really apologise to that guy actually...

Dan:
Yeah, I don't think he deserved to be nearly... dead.

Dave:
How did that happen?

Dan:
Well, he drank a bottle of whiskey... No joke!

Dave:
Bad idea!

Did
you supply the bottle of whiskey?

Dan:
Ah yeah, we did yeah... not to try to kill him though cos he was like
“I can drink whiskey too!”

Morgan:
“I can drink whiskey just as quickly as you two!”

Dan:
He drank the half bottle there in one go and we were like, “you're
gonna be sick!”. And then he got sick. And he got more sick. And
then he got more sick and then he was unconscious in the toilet he'd
eventually gotten into. I don't know how he did it. This was in my
house.

Dave:
How did an Indian guy end up in your house?

Dan:
I've no Idea! He was just there! But he was in love with Morgan...

Morgan:
And that's the origins of Anarkangel.

Dan:
So we nearly killed an
Indian guy and thought, we need to start a metal band!

Is
that what “All your Ties” is about?

Morgan:
Hahaha, I never thought about it like that. Well, “All Your Ties”
has gone through so many fuckin' changes and rewrites and the album
version that's now there is the definitive version. It's six years?
The album version is six years old.

Dave:
Where could I buy the album Morgan, if I wanted to buy the Anarkangel
album?

Morgan:
Bandcamp! It's readily
available, all you need to do is put in your credit card details...

OK
so next question, talking about the album This Moral Void, can you
talk about production?

Dan:
Basically what we
tried not to do is copy any kind of stuff. We set out to go for a
grindcore/industrial kind of thing but what came out was what came
out, Anarkangel. And it's not everybodies piece of cake, that's for
sure. I've shown it to people who are into industrial and they've
said “That's not industrial! That's not metal!”. But we've never
gone out to impress anybody, that's the best thing about it, we've
just done it for ourselves.

Morgan:
Yeah, I gotta second
that vibe. For me anyway, it's part of just relaxing and not giving a
shit about anybody really. That's what Anarkangel is to me.

Dan:
And the production comes in layers. We started off going, right,
we'll just get a simple beat going, we'll write a couple of riffs
over it and then I'll email it to Morgan. Morgan puts the vocals on
it, when I come up, we have the vocals on it then it goes back to the
drawing board again. So once the vocals are there we can restructure
it. Morgan says “Actually no, I wanna change some shit, I wanna put
this up here... change that guitar a bit...” And then we redo it
again. And that's how it's taken us four years to do it when it could
have taken us six months. But it's at our own leisure and we're doing
it for ourselves.

You
relased the track “Sick” as a video, how did that go, production
wise?

Matt:
Well, the idea, me and Dan came up with that and we asked Morgan to
do the concepts for it. And it was six to ten months, maybe even
longer than that before we started making the video. We filmed it in
a school one day.

Dave:
Funnily enough, in a nursery school! How fucking metal is that?!

Dan:
There were childrens toys, montessori dripping from the fucking
ceiling!

Dave:
No children were harmed in the making of this video.

Morgan:
Apart from those two unfortunate bastards that wandered in!

Dave:
It was actually quick enough to shoot, it was really good. Done in a
day.

Dan:
So we got Dave, “Dude, you wanna do bass guitar for it”, and
Dave's like, “sweet, I'll do it.” He learned the song in
literally no time. He just rocked up and learned the song and I
realised, “Holy fuck, I need to know the song as well before we
record this”. It didn't even occur to me! I was worried about
fuckin', “Has Matthew got this down? Is Morgan alright? This has
got to be done as well. Fuck! I need to know the song before we can
even jam! Fuck!” So I had to learn the song before I jammed it
there. And Al, the drummer from Cold Trigger was there as well and he
was fuckin' deadly! The guy came up, asked to hear the song for a
second and he went, “yeah, ok!” and he did it. He just got it, it
was insane!

Dave:
And the fucked up thing was that on the recording some of the drums
are programmed, and some of the shit should be nearly physically
impossible to even play!

Morgan:
Yeah, he actually said “Ok, listen, I'm not gonna play this part
cos it's impossible...”

Dan:
He asks me, “do you
want me to do that part on bass drum?” which is really intricate so
I ask, “can you?” and he's like, “yeah...If you want I can do
it!”

Morgan:
He currently plays the Original Rudeboys. Lets shout out to them
guys...yay...we all agree with that...

So
were there any limitations with it, or even freedoms with the
creation of the video?

Matt:
I think there was ultimate freedom, there was no actual set. You had
camera angles that you wanted to know but there was no actual
storyboard drawn out.

Dave:
It was just do what you wanna do, and do how you wanna do it!

Morgan:
I felt restrictions...

Dan:
I think when it came down to cutting the video and editing it, we did
a couple of drafts of it, and that's what came out. But the only
restrictions that we found was once everything was recorded and put
together, the camera angles that we had were the limits; because we
couldn't go from the side. We just had what we had, there's all you
can do in one day with one camera man at a cheap price.

Dave:
Fourty thousand million!! Fourty thousand million!

Morgan:
The shoot itself went pretty fuckin' flawlessly I have to say. I was
acting director that day and it was as perfect as I could have wanted
it. But first off, when I sat down I just had all this footage and I
didn't know what the fuck to do with it. Then me and Dan sat down and
we put it together and suddenly we had too little footage. I mean we
would have liked more interesting shots. And just like the music,
it's not 'til the two of us get together that it makes sense.

Dan:
It makes no sense until someone else has a look at it. That's where
we're headed now, it's myself and Morgan and Matt and Dave. The next
one should be a little bit more awesome!

There
are plans for another music video?

Morgan:
There are. There's a song, “Little Heathen” on the current
album.. .Available on bandcamp...

Dave:
For only €7? Wow, so reasonably priced!

Morgan:
Isn't it?

Dave:
Where can I get the
album for €7 Morgan?

Morgan:
On Bandcamp.com!!

Wait
a second!! That's half the price of a fully released album!

Dave:
YES!!

Morgan:
Yes... but eehh, anyway, we're planning on recording “Little
Heathen” as a music video. We're doing a call out for people to
record girls saying one line which is basically “When do you want
it?” into a camera phone or anything and then just email it to us.

Dave:
How many have you now?

Morgan:
About 30 now... we need about four hundred!

Dave:
Approached some girls in the pub last week, “How would you like to
be in a music video?” and they're like “Is it porn?”. Do you
want it to be porn?!

Dan:
And you say it's not porn and they ask “Can it BE porn?”

Morgan:
“If you really want it to beeee...”

Dan:
It makes you think back to when you're twenty one/twenty two and you
dont really wanna approach this girl, she might be scary, I dunno,
she might have, her vagina might have teeth!

Matt:
What girls were you hangin' out with?!

Dan:
You grew up in
Ireland! I'm South African, you're Irish bru! You might be my brother
but you're Irish! South African girls have teeth in their vaginas
bro! They eat your dick!

Morgan:
But yes.... Answering
your question... There is a video in the process. It's “Little
Heathen”. We just need to work out some logistics before we begin.
It's gonna be sexy!

Are
there any plans to playing any of the tracks live?

Dan:
Did you have to mention the war?

Morgan:
I'll tell you what, I'll answer this one myself. From my own point of
view, we could play live, we could rip the fuckin' stage apart live!
We could introduce an entirely new fuckin' idea to the Irish metal
scene live! BUT, I don't wanna pay that much money to play live.
Practice fees and shit like that.

Dan:
It's an investment and when and if we can, we might. If it seems
feasible to do it, we'll go off and play live! But our promotion is
strictly internet based. It's fun. We're basically a cyber band.
That's it!

Dave:
What?

Morgan:
You looked at me funny there!

Dave:
No!

Morgan:
I do it all the time, just cos you're in a proper band!

Dave:
I didn't say that! In my head you are the products of that but no...
That was a bit weird!

Dave:
What ever comes out
really isn't it, we were just there this evening bangin' out riffs
and Dan goes “what's that?” and I'm like “I dunno, I just made
it up now!” and Dan says “well that'll go with something I have!”

Dan:
It's so easy with the technology now! With ProTools, you can record
your session and you can send it all. Dave can record a whole entire
track and send it off to me. I might not have the same instruments
that he's got but midi will put that all together. The whole track is
there! I can jam something back and send it to him. And we'll work
the track until we get together for the final amalgamation of the
whole track! Like semen in a carpet!

Morgan:
Semen on the carpet? Jesus!

Dave:
Just soakin' it up!

Dan:
This is how we do it
and technology allows us to. We could sit in a band practice, and we
might do that still but this is it for us!

Dave:
The thing I love about
it is, it's on your own schedule. We don't have to go into a room at
six o'clock until ten o'clock every day, or every week and fuckin'
look at each other and go “anyone got any riffs?”. But when you
have a riff, you sit down in front of your laptop, you put it down
and you send it to the guy! You're not forced to fuckin' ejaculate
this riff between the hours of x and y on a certain day of the week.

Morgan:
I see it as an art form, in that if you're drawing or painting a
picture you're not going to be forced to do anything at a certain
time in a certain week at a certain specific moment. If something
comes to our heads we'll lay it down, send it off and that's it then.
That's the way we write.

Dan:
So we're a cyber rehearsing band!

And
Matt, you do remixes with it all too?

Matt:
Yeah, I've had some really good ideas for remixes and I'm working
away at the moment for “Sick”. The remixes for the few songs are
good ideas.

Dan:
Actually on the album, there's a track “Pariah” and there's a
laugh on there and that's all Matts idea. He said it needed something
and he pulled something off youtube. Thats it!

Have
you released any remixed tracks, or are you going to?

Matt:
Hopefully when I get them finished. It's a tedious process doing
remixes for metal. I mean the time beat is completely different.
Trying to make a decent remix of a heavy metal song is difficult. I
need to do it justice and trying to do that with sick is fuckin'
hard!

With
the whole band, are there tracks that you've discarded that you want
to work on again?

Dan:
About three albums to be honest!

Morgan:
Yeah, there were so many tracks that were just thrown aside because
we just forgot about them.

Dan:
One of the tracks
starts off with some chick going “mmm, mmm, fuck you, fuck you,
mmm”. Every one of our tracks started off with some chick going
like, “Stick your cock in my mouth!” and that's how it
progressed! We are a porn metal band!

Morgan:
The song “Sick”
itself has a porn sample in it! I fuckin' loved it the first time
that I heard it!

Dave:
The first time I heard it I was in my car! There's a siren in there,
a police siren, dunno where it is, I swear to god but I put it on, I
was hammering down the road doing ridiculous speeds and I hear this
siren! “Fuck, I've been done!”. Lookin' around there's not a car
on the road! I fuckin' shuffle back the song and it was there! I
nearly shat myself!

Morgan:
Listen out for the wilhelm scream too.

So
for the new stuff, we can assume it'll be Anarkangel style, “it'll
be ready when it's ready”?

Morgan:
Yeah! It'll be an
eclectic fusion of genres! It's gonna be better but we're not trying
to constrain ourselves to a single genre.

Dan:
We're not gonna try and do what we've done before. We're going to
improve. We've got one canvas, and four artists. Everyones got a
paintbrush and trying to paint a picture. That's what we're trying to
do.

What
are the three must have items for recording and writing?

Morgan:
Guinness, Bulmers and Tyskie!

Dave:
...apart from the
equipment you need to record?

Apart
from the equipment you need, yes...

Matt:
Booze!

Dave:
For me, a day off the next day. Not to be in work the next day 'cos
I'm gonna drink copious amounts of alcohol.

And
last of all, how would you like to see Anarkangel, six months to a
year and then two years from now?

Matt:
Kind of just seeing where it's gonna go.

Dave:
Yeah, that's the fun thing about being in this band. You don't know
what it's gonna be in the next year. There's no pressures, you don't
have to be something in a year, you don't have to want to be
something in a year. It's just gonna be its own beast, which is
awesome.

Matt:
It could take ten years for all we know

Dan:
There's no delusions of grandeur in this band.

Morgan:
That's why we don't
have a drummer... Eh, i'd like some kind of feedback though. You
know, not even recognition just feedback.

Dan:
Yeah, like I hope someone listens to it and says “man, that was
cool, I enjoyed that”

Dave:
Or gets pissed off by it!

Morgan:
Yeah!

Dave:
Like they hate this song so much that they're moved to hatred!

Dan:
Cos that's the same thing!

Dave:
You know, in a years time, the only thing I hope is that this is
still fun.

Morgan:
it's not a job being in Anarkangel. It's literally a few mates who
can get together and write music and enjoy it.

Finally I would like to thank Anarkangel for being gentlemen, taking the time to chat and sharing a few beers. If anything in this interview caught your attention, please take a look at their bandcamp page. This Moral Void is a refreshing, fast paced album with plenty of surprises. Enjoy!